T

he Home Ministry has started drafting a government regulation in-lieu-of law (Perppu) to improve the quality of this year'€™s presidential election, scheduled to be held on July 9.

General Elections Commission (KPU) chairman Husni Kamil Manik said on Thursday that the ministry had summoned the commission'€™s secretariat-general to discuss the regulation.

'€œThe Presidential Election Law had not been revised and there were some improvements needed in the legislative election'€™s regulation,'€ he told reporters on the sidelines of a plenary hearing on the national vote count at the KPU'€™s headquarters in Menteng, Central Jakarta.

Some of the improvements that could be implemented in the presidential election are the guarantee of voting rights for those included in the special voter list (DPK), the voting days for overseas and domestic polls and the voting rights of military personnel and police officers.

Moreover, the Presidential Election Law only stipulates that voters should mark the ballot papers to elect their president, while the Legislative Election Law stipulates that a voter should punch a hole through the ballot paper, according to Husni.

Therefore, Husni said, the KPU had given the government input on the necessary improvements. '€œBut after that it is the government'€™s responsibility. The draft is prepared by them and we only responded,'€ he said, adding that the Perppu was still needed despite the fact that the KPU had already created a KPU regulation on presidential election and registered the regulation at the Law and Human Rights Ministry.

Association for Election and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Titi Anggraini also said that the Perppu was crucial given there were many discrepancies between presidential election and legislative election laws.

'€œThere is DPK for the legislative election while there is no such thing for the presidential election,'€ she told The Jakarta Post.

Moreover, the Legislative Election Law stipulates that people could report on election-related violations within 7 days of the violations occurring, while the Presidential Election Law only gives 5 days, according to Titi.

Besides suggestions given to the Home Ministry, the KPU also looked at the problems plaguing this year'€™s legislative election, especially during the national vote tally, Husni said.

'€œWe will remind all election organizers to use [this year'€™s legislative election] to evaluate so that they could be better organized,'€ he said.

Moreover, the KPU would also improve on how it recorded the vote recapitulation (C1) forms, as it took one month for the Regional and Provincial General Elections Commission (KPUD) branches to record around 70 percent of the C1 forms.